~ Curing Meats & Other DIY Food Projects

Monthly Archives: February 2012

Over the past five or so years, pho has gone from an often mispronounced soup only found in cities with a high concentration of Vietnamese citizens to a culinary obsession. I credit the Food Networkification of the Travel Channel and Middle America’s discovery of Anthony Bourdain, one of the most forceful benefactors and advocates for the heavily spiced beef noodle soup. Pho is amazingly delicious and while hailing from a region with incredible heat, it is really the perfect winter meal. A favorite sight of mine is driving down Broadway and seeing Pho Xe Tang’s windows completely fogged up. That is living right there folks. Steam and slurping everywhere.

I am not claiming to be early to the party when it comes to pho, nearly the opposite. Pho took hold of me less than a decade ago when I lived not far from Argyle Street in Uptown, but the love is undeniable, especially after making my own. The process is so easy in fact that I usually keep quarts of pho stock in my freezer and use them to braise beef shanks or chuck if I am looking for something more substantial than soup. The last few times I used it as a braising medium, I had to resist turning the leftovers into rillettes. After making another batch of pho stock and having turn out extra gelatinous, I broke down and combined Pho and charcuterie. Continue reading →

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After turning collard stems into a really fantastic giardiniera, I was taken with using part of vegetables that are more typically discarded. For the last year or so, I have been peeling and eating broccoli and cauliflower stems raw like carrots or celery, typically with homemade hummus. Their crunch is their biggest appeal and the feeling that you are maximizing the value of expensive produce makes that crunch even better.

Another favorite has been replacing fennel bulbs with the tough stalks using Linda Ziedrich’s brine that includes orange rind and juice and white wine vinegar. While I never understood grocery stores selling fennel by the pound and including the regularly discarded stalks at nearly half of the weight, these sweet and tart fennel stalks never last past day 3 and are nearly perfect with salty cheese or charcuterie. It was not until the giardiniera though that I have gone off the menu and started creating new pickles from the discard-able veggie bits. While not a new idea or re-conceptualization, this is nose-to-tail cooking for vegetables. Continue reading →

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One of the benefits of keeping up with Twitter is you catch interesting side conversations between two folks who you follow. There are likely dozens and dozens of them that I miss, but one that I did not was between two authors and experts that I respect greatly, Annisa Helou and Jennifer McLagan regarding fat sheep tails and the Lebanese dish made from them called Qawarma.

As a sidenote, let this serve as first notice of Jennifer McLagan’s event in Chicago at Butcher & Larder on March 16. There will be more information forthcoming, but clear the date and let me know if you’d like to attend.

There is little to no information on Qawarma out there, but what I could find, Qawarma is a preserved confit of lamb tails. There is not much else out there, but when I read the conversation, I wanted in. The following weekend while shopping for weekly meat, I inquired about lamb tails and was greeted with the following tail. Continue reading →

As we have done over the past four or five Valentine’s Days, my wife and I have retired from the restaurant dinner scene with a special dinner at home. Even if we had not had children over that same time, we likely would have made the move. The Valentine’s Day crowd makes the brunch crowd look like gourmands by comparison, which is really saying something, and we didn’t like dealing with exasperated servers or some of the step downs in menu and step ups in prices that we saw. We could go out whenever and save frustration by doing our thing in the comforts of home on days like Valentine’s or Mother’s days. Continue reading →

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There are those barriers that you do not know are there, but they inspire silly excuses so you never need to confront them. For me, I liked bloodsausage, but never loved it*. As a result, I never ventured into making my own. However, it was not until I picked up a copy of the Le Charcutier Anglais and looked through it for the quintessential English charcuterie to make that I realized that it was not a lack of taste for blood sausage that kept me from making blood sausage, but rather that working with blood would be a difficult task for me. Continue reading →

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Recently a staple of traditional Chicago cuisine was featured in the New York Times. Giardiniera, featured here in 2010, started as an Italian Beef, Italian Sausage, and Combo sandwich condiment, but bled into pizza – it is my favorite topping at Pequod’s, even more recently drifted into the white tablecloth dining scene, and finally New York recognized it (only a step away from coopting it). There were many reactions to seeing the feature from Chicago food folk, one of which was that it was curious timing given none of the vegetables featured in the pickled condiment are in season anywhere near New York or Chicago. The comment made be think about what was available recently which led me where things are still growing, it led me South. Continue reading →

In a combination of crazy wanderlust through Southern foodways and an almost Portlandia-worthy desire to lacto-ferment everyvegetablethat I buy, I put together this kimchi of collards. It really was not that wild of a thought as collards are the same species as cabbage, the more traditionally used brassica in kimchi, but I thought it creative especially when used as a seasoning to an impromptu encased meat that we have been affectionately referring to as the Big Jong Il. Continue reading →

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Romance and offal go together like peanut butter and jelly. With Valentine’s Day coming up in a few weeks, I thought that some of you looking for ideas for what to make for the Hallmark Holiday would appreciate this ode to the heart (ha!) that captures the essence of why you should make heart a regular in your dinner rotation.

Over the holidays I made some pickled heart that was a sentimental choice, if a bit off-putting for those who do not already love offal. It was cold and cooked to death. This dish is the opposite with very little funk, taken medium rare, and served in unrecognizable chunks on a skewer – truly the gateway offal. There is no shame in that because we found it to be damned delicious, plain and simple.

Anticuchos are a South American street food made from skewered meat, most traditionally beef heart, marinated, and grilled. There are a few places serving them in Chicago, but none have hit a home run for me as they are cooked past medium rare, which for me is too far for heart. Continue reading →